1 Morley, Thomas, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, intro. Fellowes, E.H., Shakespeare Association Facsimiles No. 14, ed. Harrison, G.B. (Oxford, 1937), pp. 177–178; first published 1597.Google Scholar

2 Although the great debate between quantitative and stressed metrical scansion was still being waged in Elizabethan criticism we can assume, looking at the results of that debate retrospectively, that the quantitative rhythmical analysis had a practical validity confined almost exclusively to music. An interesting experiment in joining music with quantitative verse is Thomas Campion's ‘Come, Let Us Sound With Melody.’ Here the poet-composer matches the half- and quarter-notes of the melody respectively with the long and short syllables of the verse. See John Murray Gibbon, Melody and the Lyric From Chaucer to the Cavaliers (London, 1930), p. 93.

3 Ford, Thomas, Musicke of Sundrie Kindes, in The English School of Lutenist Song Writers, ed. Fellowes, E.H., 1st Ser., No. 3 (London, 1921), 30–31; Musicke of Sundrie Kindes first published 1607.Google Scholar

4 See, for instance, Gibbon, p. 116.

5 Lyrics which are independent of their juncture with music derive their meaning from the particular application of words and generic conventions, but when they are set to music they also become expressions of musical sounds in temporal motion. That is, they now have a function beyond their denotation and expressiveness in a purely poetic context, and the listener's attention is divided between an appreciation of their meaning and their fuller significance when joined with the music. Ford's elementary yet direct vocabulary and diction makes the listener grasp the denotative meaning of a word with ease, allowing the verse to be ‘perfectly understoode of the auditor’ while he is also responding to the aesthetic effect of the song as a whole.

6 The first four lines in the verse may be scanned as follows:

^a clausal juncture. ^b anapest. ^c imperfect rhyme with ‘known’ in line 4. (In lines 6 and 8 the rhymes also are found in the third strong stress. The same pattern appears in stanzas 2 and 3). ^d complete syntactical juncture.

7 The cadence appearing at the end of the first phrase of this air is actually a ‘feminine cadence,’ that is, a cadence in which the final chord comes on a weaker beat than its predecessor. The feminine cadence in this instance emphasizes the rhyme found in the final strong stress of lines 2 and 4 (i.e., ‘renown’ with ‘known’).